An Englishman of forty years residence in Wales pontificates about politics (slightly off-message), films and trivia. Secretary of Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats. Candidate for Neath in the Westminster elections of 1997 & 2017 and the Welsh general election of 2016.

Saturday, 1 November 2014

Climate change predictions do come true

In spite of what sceptics claim, better data mean that predictions of the effects of global warming have become more accurate in this generation. However, I doubt that John Dora, speaking to a Railfuture conference around this time last year, believed that his warning about rail lines in south-west England would be vindicated so soon. He is a fellow of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Meteorological Society, so Network Rail should have been listening when he asserted that weather-related incidents restricting access to the main line along the sea wall at Dawlish could increase by a factor of six between now and the year 2080. He went on to explain that computer modelling suggested that climate-related events occurring once every 100 years would increase to once every 14 years.